Obituary: Mick Meagan

Mick Meagan enjoyed a four-year spell at Leeds Road between 1964 and 1968, playing 132 matches and scoring a solitary goal, having arrived at the club as part of the Ray Wilson transfer to Everton. Meagan, who later became the very first manager of the Republic of Ireland national team, has passed away at the age of 88.

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Mick Meagan (Heritage Number 395) was born in Dublin, Ireland on May 29th, 1934, but began his career at Everton in 1950 after being spotted playing for the Irish Youth team against a Liverpool County side in Dublin. After spells in the A team and reserve side, he made his first team debut during the 1957-58 season against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Having started his career as an inside-left or inside-right, Meagan moved to wing-half as he wasn’t renowned for his pace. Eventually, when Harry Catterick became the Everton manager in 1961, Meagan moved to left-back, but he was equally adept at right-back too. 

His first international cap for the Irish national team also came in 1961 and he would go on to play 17 times for his country. He was also part of Everton’s title winning team of 1962-63 and won the Charity Shield in 1963.

By the end of the 1963-64 season, Everton were interested in signing Town’s left-back Ray Wilson and Eddie Boot, Town’s boss at the time, expressed an interest in signing Meagan as part of the deal. News of the transfer first broke on June 10th, 1964, when it was reported that Wilson would be signing for Everton for £50,000 or £35,000 plus Meagan. It was reported that Meagan was unwilling to drop down into Division Two and would only leave Everton to return to his home village near Dublin. 

The negotiations continued and while the Wilson deal was confirmed, discussions over whether Meagan would come to Leeds Road held the deal up for weeks. However, on June 30th, it finally went through, and it was revealed that the stumbling block had been the possibility that Town were unable to offer Meagan the terms he wanted.

However, the deal was sealed at 12:30pm that afternoon and there’s a photograph showing Wilson signing the contract at Goodison Park in the presence of Meagan, Harry Catterick, Eddie Boot and the Everton secretary Bill Dickinson. The deal was worth £40,000, with £25,000 for Wilson and Meagan being valued at £15,000.

Meagan spoke to the HTSA Heritage Project in August 2021 about his time at Leeds Road: “I have so many wonderful memories of my time at Huddersfield Town. I enjoyed my stay at Huddersfield very much, they were great times” he said. 

“I was lucky, I had spent 14 years at Everton and my time was up but Huddersfield were interested in signing me - so I went! I was lucky that Huddersfield had some very good players at the time”.

As Town began the 1964-65 season, Meagan was one of the first names on the teamsheet and he started the season as Eddie Boot’s first choice left-back. However, just four games into the season, Boot resigned: “Eddie Boot was the manager when I signed, and we played a match against Plymouth Argyle and Eddie resigned straight after that game” Meagan remembered. 

Temporarily, chief coach Ian Greaves took over as caretaker manager and steadied the ship before Tom Johnston was appointed as Boot’s permanent successor in October 1964.

Initially, Meagan was ever-present in the side, having played the first eight games of the season, and put in some impressive performances at left-back, but succumbed to injury in September. This saw the likes of Bob McNab, Bob Parker and Derek Parkin step in as Meagan recovered but by November he was back in and kept his place for the rest of the season as Town finished in a healthy 8th position in the table.

“After a few weeks (since Boot’s resignation), Tom Johnston took over as the manager and we finished well in the league and things were starting to look good for the following years, it was the start of a new era with Johnston”.

During his career, Meagan was capped 17 times by his country, with his first cap coming in 1961 against Scotland. He won four more while at Goodison Park, but the bulk of his caps came while a Town player, playing 12 games for his country during his time at Leeds Road. The first of those 12 came against Belgium in March 1965 at Lansdowne Road. 

During his first season at the club, Meagan had been seen as Ray Wilson’s replacement at left-back and played there for much of that season until March 1965, when Johnston switched him to left-half, where he played alongside John Coddington. It was here where he gained a reputation for his classy and consistent performances at the back.

The 1965-66 saw Town come close to achieving promotion to Division One as they topped the division for much of the campaign. Even as the season was drawing to a close, Town still occupied the top spot but failure to win any of their last three games saw the club slip down to 4th and they ultimately missed out. 

Meagan remembered that season: “It was a pity as it looked as if we were going to have a great season. Tom Johnston was a good manager, but he was unlucky, as he had to sell a lot of players. And the sad thing about it was, he and Johnny Quigley had a falling out and it upset a lot of the players, things were never the same after that and we missed out on promotion that year as a result”.

After that near-miss, the Town fans would have been forgiven for expecting the 1966-67 season to be the season they finally returned to Division One, but it just wasn’t to be. Town never really looked like challenging and it was only after a late burst of form that the club finished 6th. Meagan remained a regular in the side, playing 35 games and scored his only goal for the club in a 3-1 win over Coventry City at Leeds Road in November 1966.

By now, Town had developed a fierce reputation of developing youngsters at the club and some of them were starting to make their mark on the first team, which Meagan spoke about: “Huddersfield had some good young and older players then, the younger players were ready to take over and had two very good coaches in Ian Greaves and Henry Cockburn. Not only were they great coaches but very nice people.

“With the young players ready and coming through, we were very organised and there were the likes of Bob McNab who later went to Arsenal, Derek Parkin who went to Wolves and Chris Cattlin who went to Coventry”. 

By the time the 1967-68 season came around, the club were in transition, with Tom Johnston coming to the end of his tenure (he would leave the club at the end of the season). Meagan was still in the team but was something of a veteran at 33 years old and was now partnered by Roy Ellam. There was also a young up and coming player by the name of Trevor Cherry starting to break into the side and when Meagan was absent from the side due to injury, Cherry would deputise at left-half.

As the season progressed, Cherry eventually replaced him in the first team in January 1968. Meagan’s final game in a Town shirt came in the first leg of the League Cup semi-final at Highbury, where Town lost 3-2, on January 17th, 1968. He was subsequently ruled out of action with a calf muscle strain and never played for the club again as Cherry made the position his own. 

Cherry later said of Meagan: “I was dead keen, and I ended up taking the place of Mick Meagan, an Ireland international who was a smashing bloke and he did his best to help me along”.

At the end of the season, Meagan was given a free transfer away from Leeds Road and despite not seeing any first team action for four months was selected to play for his country, in a friendly with Poland on May 15th, 1968. Having won 12 of his 17 caps at Leeds Road, he is one of Town’s most capped players. A month later, he signed for Halifax Town, who were playing in the Fourth Division.

Although he hadn’t returned to the club since his departure in 1968, Meagan later spoke of his wish to visit Huddersfield and said he’d had a number of “great years in Huddersfield at a great club with a great reputation”.

While at Leeds Road, Meagan was noted for his consistent performances in defence, recognised as a dependable player with expert positional play and excellent ball distribution, which made up for his distinct lack of pace.

In a 2021 interview with the Heritage Project, teammate and future England international Bob McNab said he’d “learned everything from Mick Meagan” and went on to say: “John Coddington and Mick Meagan were better than Terry Neil and Ian Ure. I learned everything from Micky Meagan, he couldn’t run, he couldn’t jump, but nobody ever beat him. Micky never told me anything, I just copied him”.

In his only season at The Shay, Meagan helped Halifax gain promotion to Division Three under Alan Ball Snr at the end of the 1968-69 season. He left the club shortly afterwards in June 1969 to move back to his home country and sign for Drogheda, where he also took up the job as player-manager.

Just months later, in September 1969 he was appointed as the Republic of Ireland’s very first manager by the FAI, up until then the team had been picked by a team of selectors. While he expected to be directing operations from the touchline, he found himself thrust into action during his first game in charge and his 17th and final international cap came on September 21st, 1969 in a 1-1 draw with Scotland, who were ironically the opponents in his first international match in May 1961. 

Despite some improvements, Ireland failed to qualify for the 1970 World Cup or the 1972 European Championships and he left the role in 1971 after failing to win any of his 12 games in charge. Despite a less than successful spell in charge of Eire, Meagan was well respected in the Irish game and won the SWAI Personality of the Year in 1971. He was also noted for bringing some professionalism to the international side.

Meagan remained in charge at Drogheda after leaving the Ireland job and led the club to the FAI Cup final in 1971. In January 1973, he signed two of his former Town teammates, Les Massie and John Coddington. He also hoped to sign Ray Wilson but after a weeks’ training, Wilson informed Meagan that he didn’t feel up to it and declined the offer.

Meagan resigned at the end of the 1972-73 season. He was soon appointed as joint-manager of Bray Wanderers but signed for Shamrock Rovers in January 1974 as a player. Despite this, he remained as joint-manager at Bray until July 1974, when he became player-manager at Shamrock. He played in the same team as his son Mark in an FAI Cup match in 1976, which made history, shortly before he left the club. He returned to Bray as player-manager and remained at the club until around 1981.

After leaving football, Meagan worked at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum and before retirement in 1999. He spent his last years in his native Dublin and still followed football on a regular basis, including the results of his former teams, before his death.

Mick Meagan passed away on November 27th, 2022 at the age of 88.